Sat, Oct 04, 2008

Not long ago, Leslie Bennetts, author of an infamous tome warning mothers that failing to work fulltime for the entirety of their lives is sure to leave them eating dog food out of tin cans, feigned shock when at-home moms everywhere took issue with her collection of sad tales.

Last January I wrote a column entitled: Are Polar Bears Edible? I pointed out that during good times, people worry about whether polar bears will have ice in one-hundred years—but when times are tough we wonder whether the bears are tasty.

Now that Congress has approved the Bush-Paulson financial stabilization plan, Senator John McCain has an opportunity to refocus his Presidential campaign, and get back on the political offensive by pounding Senator Obama on the tax issue.

The Palin who performed so miserably in one-on-one media interviews was nowhere to be seen during Thursday night's debate with Joe Biden. Instead, the affable, tough, determined pit-bull-hockey mom presented to the GOP convention was back with a jaw-jutting, happy-warrior vengeance.

It’s an honor and a privilege to welcome to our show U.S. Senator and Republican Presidential Candidate, a man I hope we can call President Elect in a couple of months, John McCain joins us here on the Mike Gallagher Show, Senator McCain how are you sir?

With the World Series around the corner, it’s a good time to consider the famous quote of French-born intellectual Jacques Martin Barzun. “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”

One advantage of a crisis is the illumination it sheds on all the main figures of American politics -- like a strobe light on a dark dance floor, catching all involved in characteristic, sometimes embarrassing poses.

Krauthammer's Hail Mary Rule: You get only two per game. John McCain, unfortunately, has already thrown three. The first was his bet on the surge, a deep pass to David Petraeus who miraculously ran it all the way into the end zone.

If scientists were able to determine, beyond doubt, that the sky were actually going to fall on Monday, Oct. 6, Congress would pass legislation containing tax breaks for lobster fisherman in Maine and glue manufacturers in Paducah. It's just what they do.

The potentates on the Potomac have been so busy ranting about an imminent financial "catastrophe," dissecting Sarah Palin's debate debut and prognosticating John McCain's political demise that other news -- particularly about the war being waged against radical Islam -- has been hard to find.

America is on the precipice of Great Depression II: Free Markets Bugaboo. We are in fact teetering on the brink, and if you don't know what teetering is, suffice it to say that anything that sounds like a titmouse in its death throes cannot be good.

In the summer of 1954, an ambitious senator from Texas running for re-election became afraid that he might not win re-election because several large churches in the state were speaking out against his liberal politics.

PBS anchor Gwen Ifill revealed she did not disclose the book she was writing about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama to the presidential debate officials as she was being considered to moderate the vice presidential debate.

The story of an unknown who quickly rises to a leader of the Party and becomes the face of hope in America is the stuff of Hollywood magic. This election season, both campaigns feature this narrative, except like any good movie, the protagonists in the Sarah Palin story have fallen on hard times.

The 1976 presidential election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter need in a dead heat. Time Magazine printed two covers, one announcing Carter's victory which was used, the other a "He Did It!" headline to go with the Ford upset win at the end.

When Speaker Nancy Pelosi took to the floor of the House on Monday to blame
Republicans for the financial turmoil and charge them with a laissez-fare
attitude toward regulation, it seemed like a calculated effort to shift
attention and accountability from what Democrats have done to create the
current conditions.

Americans disdain snobbery in all its forms except the most popular one: reverse snobbery. Joe Biden would never get up in front of a crowd and suggest that the citizens of Manhattan are morally superior to the residents of Possum Gulch, Ark.

While Gov. Sarah Palin is being grilled on her position on mark-to-market accounting rules, the press can't bother to ask Joe Biden if he could give us a ballpark estimate on when Franklin D. Roosevelt was president.

Economists, House Republicans led by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH)
and millions of Americans across the country are questioning the
prudence of the Federal Government's bailout of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac
and AIG.

In recent weeks, as the American people have continued to grapple with a slowing economy and instability on Wall Street, the response to calls for a sweeping economic stabilization plan has understandably been one of anger and frustration.

The conservative wing of the House does not appear to be dramatically changing their original proposal to address what President Bush has called a looming economic “panic” after their chamber failed to pass a compromise bailout package Monday.

Unlike the days of debates about lipstick comments and flag pins, the past week has been dominated by major issues. The House bailout bill, which we were told early and often was sure to pass, suffered a bipartisan defeat.

Representatives of GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign said they were unaware the moderator of Thursday’s vice presidential debate had penned a book about the Democratic presidential candidate, which will be released on Inauguration Day.

Ever since liberal media types felt robbed by the Bush-Quayle campaign's "lies" about Michael Dukakis in 1988, we've been suffering through the media elite's attempts to "police" the facts in advertisements.

On Sunday evening, Republican House Minority Leader John A. Boehner
explained his considered opinion on the $700 billion Wall Street bailout
plan: It's a "crap sandwich," he said, but he was going to eat it.

Paul Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi Army in May 2003 is without doubt one of the most controversial military and political decisions made in Iraq and perhaps one of the most controversial made since 9-11.

Monday's House vote to kill the bipartisan economic rescue plan was a stunning profile in cowardice, disregarding a mountain of evidence that the U.S. economy is teetering on the brink of the worst calamity since the 1930s.

We are waist deep in evasions because one cannot talk sense about the cultural roots of the financial crisis without transgressing this cardinal principle of politics: Never shall be heard a discouraging word about the public.

Palin's fans say they like her specifically because she's an outsider, not part of the Washington club. When she flubs during interviews, they identify with that, too. "You see the lack of polish, we applaud it," one reader wrote.

Although the abortion debate has largely been cast in terms of a woman’s right to choose whether or not to give birth to a fetus, based on a set of lifestyle and health-related factors, the alarming number of abortions performed each year suggests a different story altogether.

As I sat glassy-eyed in front of my television last Sunday night, my heart began a slow and painful journey to the back of my throat. I sat alone; relieved that nobody else was present to witness my moment.

As negotiations over Congress’s emergency rescue bill continued over the weekend, repeated rumors leaked out that the Democrats were trying to funnel money to a hyper-partisan organization involved in criminal voter fraud.

Mon, Sep 29, 2008

Tip O’Neil hangs in history like the rest of the good ole days. His was a time that marked the end; a time when there was partisanship, but plenty of rolled up sleeves intent on accomplishing business for the good of the nation.

In a stunning vote that shocked the capital and worldwide markets, the House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue for the nation's financial system, ignoring urgent warnings from President Bush and congressional leaders of both parties that the economy could nosedive without it.

Barack Obama’s Communications Director Robert Gibbs insisted Fox News “didn’t have their facts straight” during a morning interview about the bracelet of a deceased soldier Obama wears and controversially invoked at Friday’s presidential debate.

Every year I attend a national conference of editorial writers and listen to
us deliver critiques of one another's work. It can be a dispiriting
experience, especially when the editorial under the microscope is one's own.

As our presidential candidates drone on about our current financial crisis being caused by greedy Wall Street CEOs, a study just released by Canada's Fraser Institute points to what the real problems are in the United States.

During Friday's debate, John McCain assiduously and inexplicably avoided using the issue that might have won him the debate and the presidency: opposition to a taxpayer-funded bailout of the financial crisis.

The final issue of American Home, the oldest Slovenian newspaper in the world arrived in my mailbox last month. The masthead, as always, featured the Statue of Liberty and the slogan, “American in Spirit; Foreign in Language Only."

Sometimes bipartisanship is grounds for celebration, but more often it is cause for tears. Last week, congressional leaders from both parties went into a room to hammer out a plan that would put taxpayers on the hook for $700 billion.

Last week, Main Street received an opportunity to sit in the front seat of the election, thanks to John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign to go to Washington to help Congress fix the financial meltdown.